Google has just made a lot of geeks happy by doing what most of us had predicted but nobody could guarantee: it has released On2's video codec, VP8, under a BSD-style, royalty-free open source license.

Google is combining with Mozilla (Firefox) and Opera in the WebM project to create a Matroska file format using VP8 and the Ogg Vorbis open source audio codec. It should enable any HTML5 web browser and any video player to play video.

Mozilla and Opera have declined to use the H.264 codec heavily promoted by Apple because it is encumbered by numerous patents and expensive to license.

Adobe Flash has been a major user of On2 codecs as well as supporting H.264 videos, so it has no problems handling the new format. Adobe has already announced its support. Microsoft has added that: "In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows."

"I, like many others, have reason to believe that H.264 will not be Google's final choice. There's good reason to believe this: they are purchasing On2. On2 has technologies that are supposed to be better than H.264. If Google owns the rights to those technologies they are very likely to use them on their properties to promote them and are also likely to license them in a web-friendly (ie royalty-free) fashion. Google actually has a decent history of doing this."

There were attempts to include the open source Theora video codec in the HTML5 specification, until Apple refused to support it. Whether Apple will also try to kill VP8 remains to be seen. However, the company has already got far too much of a reputation for being overly restrictive and decidedly uncool, so it would be better off siding with the geeks.